Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev (15 April 1894-11 September 1971) was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 14 September 1953 to 14 October 1964, succeeding Georgy Malenkov and preceding Leonid Brezhnev. He was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for liberal reforms in domestic policy.

Biography
Nikita Khrushchev was born in Kalinovka, Kursk Governorate, Russian Empire on 15 April 1894, and he moved to Ukraine with his family in 1909. He became active for the Bolsheviks in the local mining community, and in 1918 joined the party. He fought in the Russian Civil War, from which he returned in 1922 to become deputy manager of the mines in his local area of Yuzovka. He soon attracted the attention of the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Lazar Kaganovich, who came to rely on Khrushchev's energy and reliability without feeling threatened, because of Khrushchev's lack of formal education. Khrushchev followed Kaganovich to Moscow, where he became a student and continued his political career. With Kaganovich as first secretary, he became second secretary of the Moscow Communist Party in 1933 and was responsible for the building of its underground transport system, as well as other large urban projects.

Khrushchev succeeded Kaganovich in 1935, but returned to the Ukrainian SSR to become first secretary of the Central Committee in the Ukraine, serving from 1938 to 1947. He survived Joseph Stalin's Great Purge because he actively supported it, and also because he had found favor with Stalin as a good friend of Stalin's deceased wife. During World War II, he served in the Red Army and took part in many major battles, including the Battle of Stalingrad. In late 1943 he devoted himself to the reconstruction and Stalinization of the liberated Ukraine. In 1949, he once again became head of the Moscow Communist Party, while he was also a secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

At the time of Stalin's death, he was the most junior member of the ruling group, which included Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria, and Kaganovich. By October 1953, however, he had advanced to second-in-command beehind Molotov as first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He then managed to remove Beria and Malenkov from office, and strengthen his position through his shrewd and famous denunciation of excesses of Stalinism at the XXth Party Congress on 25 February 1956. This gave him popularity at home and abroad, while compromising his rivals, who had been much more involved in Stalin's purges than himself. His power was finally secured in June 1957, when the "anti-party group" of Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov, and Dmitri Shepilov gained a majority in the Politburo for his dismissal. With the help of Georgy Zhukov and the KGB, he was able to insist on the decision's ratification by the plenary session of the Central Committee, which duly met and overturned the Politburo's decision.

Khrushchev was now free to get rid of his opponents, adding the dismissal of Zhukov for good measure. However, his erratic and contradictory policies soon eroded his authority. Abroad, any credit he had won for his anti-Stalinism and signing of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963 was eroded by his curshing of the Hungarian Revolution and the Cuban Missile Crisis. At home, his reform of the regional party structure alienated his suppor tthere, while his cut in army salaries and his ostensible preference of nuclear over conventional armaments caused the hostility of the army. His vicious campaign against religion leading to larg-escale church closures did little to enhance his popularity. His ill-judged attempt to revive his standing through another wave of anti-Stalinism lost him even the support of the security forces, many of whose officers had been executors of Stalin's orders. Finally, his welcome diversion of resources from heavy industry to food and consumer goods was accompanied by his ambitious and over-the-top promotion of agricultural pet projects like the unsuitable cultivation of corn. In October 1964, his colleagues in the Politburo had had enough and removed him from office while he was away on holiday. He devoted the last years ot his life to vindicating himself in two volumes of memoirs.